As the world is increasingly dependent upon computing and computational processes associated with data analysis, it is essential to gain a better understanding of the visualization technologies that are used to make meaning of massive scientific data. It is also essential that the infrastructure, the very means by which technologies are developed for improving the public's engagement in science itself, be better understood. Thus, this AISL Innovations in Development project will address the critical need for the public to learn how to interpret and understand highly complex and visualized scientific data. The project will design, develop and study a new technology platform, xMacroscope, as a learning tool that will allow visitors at the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Center of Science and Industry, to create, view, understand, and interact with different data sets using diverse visualization types. The xMacroscope will support rapid research prototyping of public experiences at selected exhibits, such as collecting data on a runner's speed and height and the visualized representation of such data. The xMacroscope will provide research opportunities for exhibit designers, education researchers, and learning scientists to study diverse audiences at science centers in order to understand how learning about data through the xMacroscope tool may inform definitions of data literacy. The research will advance the state of the art in visualization technology, which will have broad implications for teaching and learning of scientific data in both informal and formal learning environments. The project will lead to better understanding by science centers on how to present data to the public more effectively through visualizations that are based upon massive amounts of data. Technology results and research findings will be disseminated broadly through professional publications and presentations at science, education, and technology conferences. The project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. The project is driven by the assumption that in the digital information age, being able to create and interpret data visualizations is an important literacy for the public. The research will seek to define, measure, and advance data visualization literacy. The project will engage the public in using the xMacrocope at the Science Museum of Minnesota and at the Center of Science and Industry's (COSI) science museum and research center in Columbus, Ohio. In both museum settings the public will interact with different datasets and diverse types of visualizations. Using the xMacroscope platform, personal attributes and capabilities will be measured and personalized data visualizations will be constructed. Existing theories of learning (constructivist and constructionist) will be extended to capture the learning and use of data visualization literacy. In addition, the project team will conduct a meta-review related to different types of literacy and will produce a definition with performance measures to assess data visualization literacy - currently broadly defined in the project as the ability to read, understand, and create data visualizations. The research has potential for significant impact in the field of science and technology education and education research on visual learning. It will further our understanding of the nature of data visualization literacy learning and define opportunities for visualizing data in ways that are both personally and culturally meaningful. The project expects to advance the understanding of the role of personalization in the learning process using iterative design-based research methodologies to advance both theory and practice in informal learning settings. An iterative design process will be applied for addressing the research questions by correlating visualizations to individual actions and contributions, exploring meaning-making studies of visualization construction, and testing the xMacroscope under various conditions of crowdedness and busyness in a museum context. The evaluation plan is based upon a logic model and the evaluation will iteratively inform the direction, process, and productivity of the project.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. The subject of physics and all of its sub-disciplines are becoming more prevalent in the public press as the research results appear to be quite interesting and important. While the physics discipline has made a Nation-wide effort to acquaint the public with physics knowledge through informal education learning experiences for years, it has not been as successful as the community desires. Thus, this project is aimed to gather all of the informal and outreach physics education efforts that have been attempted in the hope of finding the best practices for learning physics concepts and practices. A compendium will be published to inform future opportunities on how to educate the public through informal and outreach mechanisms. This project is a collaboration between Michigan State University and the University of Colorado. The physics community has a long history of engaging audiences in informal education activities. Physics institutions that facilitate informal programs include university departments, national laboratories and centers, and professional societies and organizations. There is, however, no systemic understanding of how these programs are facilitated, nor an assessment of the collective impact that these programs have on participants. This project will address numerous research questions in the broad areas of Activity Detail, Structural Aspects, and Assessment. Further, their efforts will determine the "who, what, why, where and how" of informal physics offerings, focusing on their facilitation, impact on participants, and the academic and discipline-specific cultures from which these programs originate. The study has several definite research outcomes that will emerge from this methodology: 1) They will produce a survey of the informal efforts of university physics departments, national physics labs and national physics organizations, 2) They will develop a taxonomy of informal physics programs from which we can characterize the landscape of programs, and 3) by investigating both "successful" as well as "failed" or terminated programs, they will develop an understanding of the culture and resources needed to support outreach from these research findings. In addition, they will produce published works that can be utilized by informal practitioners and administrators in physics to examine current programs and guide the development of new programs. With regards to the research questions and framework, the overarching and driving question for this research project is: "What is the landscape of informal physics learning, specifically, of those programs in the United States facilitated by physicists and physics students at academic institutions, national labs and by national physics organizations?" This study will provide a robust understanding of the state of informal physics programs and outreach by physicists in the United States today. Findings will inform practitioners and administrators as to how best to support and design informal physics programming. The results will also have broad implications for other discipline-specific informal STEM programming. The primary data collection methods will be a nationwide survey and interviews with a large sample of informal practitioners from the physics community. Site visits will be conducted with a subset of these programs in order to observe programs in action and to glean insights from university participants, community partners, public, and K-12 audiences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kathleen HinkoNoah Finkelstein
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
As higher education institutions (HEIs) work to enhance Broader Impacts (BI) efforts, collaborations with informal science education institutions (ISEs) (e.g. science centers, aquaria, zoos) can help them strengthen their impact and reach broader audiences. This project builds on the successful Portal to the Public (PoP) framework, bringing together the expertise and resources of HEIs and ISEs around the shared mission of engaging public audiences in current STEM research. The project is designed to address several critical needs: (1) Public outreach BI activities are relatively uncommon compared to BI that is focused within the infrastructure of academia; (2) Because collaborations with ISEs are frequently tied to individual Principal Investigators (PIs), there is limited opportunity to build a body of knowledge around the practice of partnering for BI work; and (3) Collaborations are often transient, making it more difficult for universities to view BI on an institutional level in ways that leverage particular institutional assets or strategies and even link investigators from multiple projects.
The specific areas of study are:
a. Develop and test a structure for education/outreach BI experience design that addresses a public audience need and meets NSF's BI criterion: The project will create disseminatable tools around the activity design process (including evaluation of learning impacts). By convening cross-disciplinary teams, the project will ensure that experiences will reflect a wide range of expertise and will help meet the needs of multiple stakeholders. These established structures will lower the barrier to entry for PIs who want to do public outreach BI.
b. Design, test, and study structures for long-term, mutually beneficial HEI-ISE partnerships: The project will build on the proven PoP model to create flexible, disseminatable tools around the development of institutional partnerships at three collaborating HEI-ISE site pairings that consider each institution's resources, constraints and strategic goals, including a cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary Broader Impacts Design (BID) Team structure. Sustained partnerships will support ongoing public engagement with current STEM research.
c. Anchor the partnership at the HEI with a representative from an office of research support: Research support professionals will be a core part of the BID Team and will help support institutional strategies for aligning BI activities with broader goals around community engagement.
d. Study the culture of HEI-ISE partnerships, building knowledge about how these institutions can form effective, sustained and mutually beneficial collaborations.
Project partners include Pacific Science Center with the University of Washington, Bothell, WA; University of Wisconsin-Madison with the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery; and the Sciencenter with Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. In addition, the Center for Research in Lifelong Learning, Oregon State University will oversee the research aspects of the project. The project's primary benefit is the development of more effective mechanisms for HEIs and ISEs to collaborate, that will better enable them to engage their communities in experiences and conversations about current STEM research and innovation.
This project is being funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
Over the seven years prior to this award, the principal investigator from George Mason University and a national team of scientists, professional societies, science communication researchers, and broadcast meteorologists have been engaged in an effort to include in TV and other weather broadcasts information about current research on the interactions of climate and weather. A Climate Matters network has been established that involves 350 weathercasters at 218 stations, in 119 media markets, nationwide. A particular focus of the initiative has been to help the public become more familiar with the science behind how their local weather and its trends are related to the dynamics of the climate. Many communities nationwide are engaged in deliberations about how to understand, plan for, and adapt to the potential impacts of changes in their weather on important factors pertaining to their economy and well-being, such as natural resources, natural disasters, agriculture, industry, and health. The goal of this continuing project is to expand the quantity and nature of the coverage of such information into the news segments of local news media. By stimulating local reporting on climate impacts and their relationships to personal and community-wide decision-making, this project will potentially help millions of Americans better understand and respond to critical factors that are affecting their lives. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
The project involves five inter-related, complementary activities: (1) Knowledge building through formative research and process evaluation, specifically in-depth interviews and random sample surveys of journalists in each of the participating journalism professional societies; (2) Recruiting 400 news directors, producers, reporters and additional weathercasters into the Climate Matters network; (3) Providing climate reporting training and professional development to members of the network; (4) Producing and distributing Climate Matters reporting packages to all members of the network on a near-weekly basis; and (5) Evaluating the impacts of the climate reporting on public understanding of science.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Edward MaibachSusan HassolBernadette PlackyRichard CraigTeresa Myers
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. The goal of this project is to make 21st century quantum science comprehensible and engaging to non-expert informal adult learners. This project has strong potential to add new knowledge about the public's perception and understanding of quantum physics. This scientific content is often difficult for informal audiences to grasp, and there are relatively few accessible learning resources for a non- professional audience. The development of this online, interactive resource with short animations, graphics, and simulations has strong potential to fill this gap. It will develop a visually driven online resource to engage non-expert audiences in understanding the basics of quantum physics. The web design will be modular, incorporating many multimedia elements and the structure will be flexible allowing for future expansion. All content would be freely available for educational use. There is potential for extensive reach and use of the resources by informal adult learners online as well as learners in museums, science centers, and schools. Project partners are the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, College Park. An independent evaluation of the project will add new knowledge about informal learners' perceptions and/or knowledge about quantum science and technology. An initial needs assessment via focus groups with the general public will be designed to find out more about what they already know about quantum physics topics and terminology, as well as what they want to know and what formats they prefer (games, simulations, podcasts, etc.). In person user testing will be used with early versions of the project online resource using a structured think-aloud protocol. Later in year 1 and 2, online focus groups with the general public will be conducted to learn what they find engaging and what they learned from the content. Iterative feedback from participants during the formative stage will guide the development of the content and format of the online resources. The Summative Evaluation will gather data using a retrospective post-survey embedded with a pop-up link on the Atlas followed by interviews with a subset of online users. Google Analytics will be used to determine the breadth and depth of their online navigation, what resources they download, and what websites they visit afterward. A post-only survey of undergraduate and graduate students who participated in resource development will focus on changes in students' confidence around their science communication skills and level of quantum physics understanding.
The Exploratorium’s livestream of the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse reached over 63 million people. Live programs in English and Spanish provided an informal learning experience outside the museum. Over 2.75 million people viewed on-demand videos on eclipse science. Sixty major media providers rebroadcast the livestream telescope feed.
Edu, Inc. conducted a summative evaluation of the NASA-funded project. The study reveals that the Exploratorium successfully disseminated eclipse science and STEM content through media channels and a mobile app, delivering a museum experience to online
In March of 2016, a total solar eclipse occurred in the southwestern pacific; and in August of 2017, a total solar eclipse occurred across a broad swath of the United States. The Exploratorium launched a 2.5 year public education program—Navigating the Path of Totality—that used these two total solar eclipses as platforms for sparking public engagement and learning about the Sun, heliophysics, and the STEM content related to both. These sequential eclipses provided an unprecedented opportunity to build and scaffold public engagement and education. Our strategy was to start the public engagement process with the 2016 eclipse, nurture that engagement with resources, activities and outreach during the 17 months between the eclipses, so that audiences (especially in the U.S., where totality was visible in multiple areas across the country) would be excited, actively interested, and prepared for deeper engagement during the 2017 eclipse. For the August 2017 eclipse, the Exploratorium produced live telescope and program feeds from Madras, OR and Casper, WY. The Exploratorium worked with NASA to leverage what was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for millions to bring heliophysics information and research to students, educators, and the public at large through a variety of learning experiences and platforms.
The core of this project was live broadcasts/webcasts of each eclipse. To accomplish these objectives, the Exploratorium produced and disseminate live feeds of telescope-only images (no commentary) of each eclipse originating them from remote locations; produce and disseminate from the field live hosted broadcasts/webcasts of each eclipse using these telescope images; design and launch websites, apps, videos, educator resources, and shareable online materials for each eclipse; design and deliver eclipse themed video installations for our Webcast studio and Observatory gallery in the months that lead up to each eclipse and a public program during each eclipse; and conduct a formative and summative evaluation of the project.
These broadcasts/webcasts and pre-produced videos provide the backbone upon which complementary educational resources and activities can be built and delivered. Programs and videos were produced in English and Spanish languages. As a freely available resource, the broadcasts/webcasts also provide the baseline content for hundreds if not thousands of educational efforts provided by other science-rich institutions, schools, community-based organizations, and venues. Platforms such as NASA TV and NASA website, broadcast and online media outlets such as ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and PBS, as well as hundreds of science institutions and thousands of classrooms streamed the Exploratorium eclipse broadcasts as part of their own educational programming, reaching 63M people. These live broadcasts were relied upon educational infrastructure during total solar eclipses for institutions and individuals on the path and off the path alike.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will conduct research designed to deepen our fundamental knowledge about culture, experience, and ecosystems cognition and to develop innovative practices and approaches to support learning about changing ecological systems and environmental decision making. Work on cultural differences in the production of complex systems knowledge is severely lacking. This gap in knowledge may contribute to the continued reproduction of inequities in science education. More broadly findings from this project will have clear implications for theories of cognitive development, especially those pertaining to how knowledge is shaped by culture and experience. Focusing on ecosystems may represent an opportunity to not only increase engagement and achievement in science among non-dominant communities and Native youth specifically, but also advance effective learning for all communities. The primary deliverables for the project are conference presentations and research publications. However, the project will also develop additional resources freely available to researchers, educators, and the general public. These will include summer curricular materials and teaching tools, professional development workshops, practitioner briefs about research findings that can be used in professional development workshops and shared share more broadly, and evaluation reports.
A deeper understanding of cultural influences on conceptions of the natural world can serve to advance the educational needs of children, including children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Project research will include two interrelated series of studies designed to expand knowledge about human cognition of complex ecosystems and the affordances of informal STEM learning environments in developing and supporting the critical 21st century skill of ecological systems level reasoning. The first consists of a series of experiments focused on ecological cognition and the role of humans in nature. The second consists of design-based research interventions in informal settings, summer workshops for youth and the communities, focused on ecological systems level thinking and socio-environmental decision making. The project will recruit and engage both child and adult participants from two broad cultural communities, Native Americans and European Americans living in urban and suburban communities, in part because it affords a sharp test of human-nature relations. Sampling from two different urban communities will avoid simple Native-non-Native comparative binaries and to conduct Native-to-Native comparative analysis. Based on results from this, the project will result in: 1) foundational knowledge about human learning and reasoning and ecosystems and environmental decision making, 2) culturally responsive models of learning and practice about complex ecosystems for indoors and outdoors informal learning environments, and 3) insights about research-practice-community partnerships. One important objective of the research is to broaden participation and close opportunity gaps for under-represented groups in STEM fields broadly and more specifically for Indigenous people. Members of Indigenous communities, who provide strong role models for other aspiring scholars, will be involved as postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and graduate fellows.
Polar Extremes: Enhancing Experiential Digital Learning is an integrated media and research project produced by the PBS science series, NOVA, that will bring polar science to informal learners through traditional storytelling and experiential, digital learning environments. Stark, cold, and seemingly frozen in time, the top and bottom of the Earth feel other-worldly, completely removed from our everyday existence. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. The Arctic and Antarctic exert profound influence over our entire planet. Disturbances in these icy realms can send transformative ripples around the globe, altering the circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, and affecting every form of life. And although the poles might seem constant and everlasting, they--like our planet--are always changing, with a deep and complex past. NOVA will provide informal science learners access to specialized research happening at the ends of the earth, introducing them to today's scientists exploring the major drivers of the climate, uncovering the deep history of past paleoclimates, or perfecting climate and weather models. The project includes: a 2-hour nationally broadcast PBS documentary (working title Polar Extremes); a NOVA Polar Lab, an experiential interactive learning platform on polar science; and a Polar Exploration Initiative consisting of a 10-part YouTube series, a collection of 360 videos, virtual field trips, and social media reporting "on location" from Antarctica, along with other polar-themed video, radio and digital journalism. It also includes a research program conducted in collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) to study how narrative-driven and experiential learning can foster informal learning in polar science across a diverse array of audiences. NOVA, the most popular science program on television, with a robust digital presence, will bring current polar science to millions. NOVA will use a range of media to transport viewers to remote polar locations, to interact with polar scientists, manipulate polar data, or vicariously explore the frozen tundra--using a mix of learning approaches. This project will develop and test the impact of two forms of informal learning: traditional narrative-driven storytelling and active, experiential learning. Both components will be developed through audience research, formative evaluation or pilot testing, and experiments. The overarching goal is to determine the best way to combine and leverage traditional and interactive media technologies to educate the public about polar science. How can these modes enhance learning outcomes? The study uses the Informal Science Learning "strand framework" developed by the National Research Council in Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits (2009). Because different age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds may engage differently with different types of learning materials and platforms, the project components are designed to test a variety of different learning approaches, with different audiences. This study will be one of the first to address the relative efficacy of various forms of experiential education and whether active versus vicarious experiential learning depends on the characteristics of the learners. As engagement technologies continue to evolve, this project will help inform how to best design and apply them effectively. The project will apply these new lessons specifically to present polar research to the public and to offer audiences an opportunity to explore and learn about these remote regions in new ways that bring them to life, make them relevant, and enhance learning outcomes. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. The project has co-funding support from the Office of Polar Programs (OPP).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Paula ApsellLisa LeombruniJulia CortHunter Gehlbach
Cities and communities in the U.S. and around the world are entering a new era of transformational change, in which their inhabitants and the surrounding built and natural environments are increasingly connected by smart technologies, leading to new opportunities for innovation, improved services, and enhanced quality of life. The Smart and Connected Communities (SCC) program supports strongly interdisciplinary, integrative research and research capacity-building activities that will improve understanding of smart and connected communities and lead to discoveries that enable sustainable change to enhance community functioning. This project is a Research Coordination Network (RCN) that focuses on achieving SCC for medium/small size, remote, and rural communities through a polycentric (multiple centers) integrated policy, design, and technology approach. The communities served by the RCN have higher barriers to information, resources, and services than larger urban communities. To reduce this gap, the PIs propose to develop need-based R&D pipelines to select solutions with the highest potential impacts to the communities. Instead of trying to connect under-connected communities to nearby large cities, this proposal aims to develop economic opportunities within the communities themselves. This topic aligns well with the vision of the SCC program, and the proposed RCN consists of a diverse group of researchers, communities, industry, government, and non-profit partners.
This award will support the development of an RCN within the Commonwealth of Virginia which will coordinate multiple partners in developing innovations utilizing smart and connected technologies. The goal of the research coordination network is to enable researchers and citizens to collaborate on research supporting enhanced quality of life for medium, small, and rural communities which frequently lack the communication and other infrastructure available in cities. The research coordination network will be led by the University of Virginia. There are 14 partner organizations including six research center partners in transportation, environment, architecture and urban planning, and engineering and technology; two State and Industry partners (Virginia Municipal League and Virginia Center for Innovative Technology); four community partners representing health services (UVA Center for Telemedicine), small and remote communities (Weldon Cooper Center), neighborhood communities (Charlottesville Neighborhood Development), and urban communities (Thriving Cities); and two national partners which support high speed networking (US-Ignite) and city-university hubs (MetroLab). Examples of research coordination include telemedicine services, transportation services, and user-centric and community-centric utilization and deployment of sensor technologies.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ila BermanT. Donna ChenKaren RheubanQian Cai
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches and resources for use in a variety of settings.The project plans to develop evidence-based principles to guide citizen science project owners in the coordinated management of project participants within the SciStarter landscape. SciStarter is a repository of over 1,500 citizen science (CS) projects. Through prior research, SciStarter 2.0 tools were developed which can be used to study and coordinate recruitment and retention strategies across projects. Coordinated management has the potential to deepen volunteer learning and growth and benefit project goals because it can address across-project skew (CS volunteers involved in multiple projects), evolving motivations, seasonal gaps, untapped synergies across projects, and other unanticipated factors that cannot be addressed via management within project silos. The project will increase the capacity of citizen science projects to achieve their myriad scientific, learning and conservation goals through enhanced coordination of volunteer management, facilitated by evidence-based guidance from the SciStarter's User's Manual for Project Owners. The findings of the research will guide project design and implementation towards synergies that increase the capacity of projects to generate scientific, learning, and conservation outcomes. Research about citizen scientists has focused on within-project assessments and comparisons of projects, but few have examined dynamics of recruitment, retention, and movement of individuals across projects. SciStarter is designed for embedded tracking of participation dynamics in a landscape of projects. The project will expand embedded assessment to measure scientific, learning, and conservation outcomes and their links to participation dynamics within and across projects. Through social network analysis, the project will describe patterns of bridges, ties, and distances among projects based on the cross-over of participants. The project will also propose qualitative research to understand project managers' perceptions of SciStarter and the costs and benefits of coordinated management of citizen scientists. The research is designed to provide insights into participation dynamics that will lead to subsequent knowledge building across citizen science projects, and determine whether new evidence about advantages and disadvantages of coordinated management will persuade project owners to rely less on the silo approach to volunteer management.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings. The project will bring together science museum visitor experience developers, visitor studies staff, indoor location technology developers, cyber-learning researchers, and STEM informal learning specialists for a two day conference, COMPASS (Conference on Mobile Position Awareness Systems and Solutions), to address the achievements and potential of indoor location aware mobile (ILAM) technology in science museums. The pre-conference work, the conference itself, and a subsequent e-publication will provide multiple, informed perspectives and knowledge around ILAM for science museums to develop apps for visitors' own smartphones to enhance and personalize the visitor experience and to experiment with new kinds of inquiry-based learning. The goals of the conference are to form an integrated vision by consolidating expertise from disparate disciplines connected to ILAM tech development, to transform visitor mobile tools to provide more innovative forms of interaction and personalization, and to open new avenues for visitor research with automated data collection and analysis.
The COMPASS conference will bring together 80 participants for two days in September 2018 at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA. The first dissemination will take place in a presentation at the ASTC conference the following month in October 2018. A webinar sharing insights from COMPASS and inviting others to engage will be held in March 2019 hosted by ASTC and accessible by ASTC members and non-members alike. A companion COMPASS e-publication will be released for free download, also in March 2019, with summaries of conference proceedings, key issues identified, case histories of ILAM in museums, white papers and other resources. Conference outcomes include establishing a community of practice or special interest group and establishing common goals for future collaborative work. By gathering a diverse range of perspectives and expertise to share research and evidence based findings, COMPASS include collective problem solving and an informed cross disciplinary approach to planning and implementing ILAM technology in the museum environment. The conference will explicitly address the benefits and quality of open source code and protocols and how techniques could be shared among institutions. As professional experience with deploying ILAM apps grows, this tool could be used to increase accessibility for diverse visitor populations, put in use at smaller and medium sized science centers, and applied to a variety of research studies, increasing the impact for funders and benefiting the science center community at large.